Wrought-Iron Men
by Shosho Suemasa
Summary: Drabbles (and possibly, ficlets) about Kisame and Itachi's day-to-day activities as troubled lovers. [This work has also been published on my AO3 account]
1. Of Perfume & Men

Kisame lay on his back, one leg spreading black blanket away from his body. He blinked a few times, facing the clean ceiling of his room with crumpled sheet underneath his naked torso.

He turns his head to see a certain muscular—but also lean—man wrapped in only an oversized shirt whose body lay far back on a long red sofa across the room, legs wide open. But the breezy wind gets under Kisame's skin fast, so his glance didn't last long.

Kisame squirmed, the front of his shorts bulging. He got up and sat cocooned inside the blanket, legs crossed, "That's my shirt."

"I know," the latter said with white puff coming out of his mouth. Kisame thinks it's the weather—or is it late night showering? The dangling raven hair is damp—until he smelled the reeking smoke of cigarette.

His sight may blur now but he could never miss that smell.

"Close the window, Itachi… **_please_** ," he voiced finally, his speech slurs. He did drink a little too much.

The man with long damp hair finally glanced back, one of his eyebrows raised before he showed Kisame his left hand, "I'm smoking."

"Stop smoking, then. I'm freezing."

Kisame puts his face on a palm, rubbing the drowsiness away and start releasing just the tip of the blanket covering him; finally succumbs to the forming hangover. Right then the man facing him chooses to stride toward bed. Heat find its way south for Kisame.

In mere seconds Kisame could feel trickling water sliding on his thigh as he watches Itachi crawl over him. The raven damp hair he was staring at now dangles above him, tickling sides of his face. Slowly, he also feels Itachi landing all his weight on him by sitting on his stomach.

As the moon outside comes in full circle, not even a single nerve or muscle is changing on both faces. Blinks are rare. The man underneath held cold anticipating stare even with a hint of adoration showing slightly between hooded lust, however, the other's gaze are even harder to fathom.

Suddenly all he could see is Itachi's right arm extending and the hand tugs his hair. So hard it slightly dragged Kisame's head along.

"Listen,"

Now their faces are only millimeters apart.

"You can drink all you want. But if, by any chance, I could smell Haku's perfume again, I swear I'll pull your head off."

Kisame grins.

"Only you wouldn't."

"Bite me."

"You wouldn't have the time, really."

"Why won't I?"

"I kept thinking about killing you for good," Kisame said it in a steely voice unknown to Itachi at the same time he rises without averting Itachi's flaring eyes. Itachi had to do the same thing but he also have to back away, Kisame hold no intention of just giving in as per usual.

"Or should I get rid of Juzo first?"

Itachi moves even further, now their gazes are of equal height.

"And then I remember, maybe Shisui?"

Kisame, though slouching, stares menacing.

"Tenma?"


	2. Creep

One could get a little bit too excited in sadness, Naruto once said; exactly the kind of sadness Sasuke's brother currently occupied with.

Here's a 40s jazz big band playing wonderful repertoires on a four inches platform, under very attractive lighting set at the centre of a great café with great coffee just a few meters behind Sasuke and Itachi, seated on a sofa right in front of him, still couldn't move his eyes off _his_ phone screen—Sasuke's phone, mind you.

All this happening because Itachi's longest standing lover just decided to finally break it off and that it was a good idea to block Itachi in every social media they're using.

Well, yes. It's hardly surprising that now the internet finally took a liking from his older brother, but hey, who knows this cold-hearted bastard could really feel heartbroken?

"Can you at least relax your shoulders, Brother? You looked way too excited," Sasuke quipped.

"The band's awesome, anyway. Can't you hear it?" again, Sasuke tried. Not only that Itachi won't let go of his phone, Itachi's hearing could hardly trace the heavenly notes the band' saxophonist improvises when all his life Sasuke knew jazz is almost Itachi's half lifeline other than books.

The only thing his brother is willing to hear is Kisame's gruff voice from a snap-gram update. Kisame being the once longest standing fuck buddy his brother was always preoccupied with. So, of course whatever is happening to his brother is obvious but, still...

"You know stalking snap-grams will get you nowhere, _Nii-san_..."

Itachi looked up, meeting Sasuke's suggestive gaze with furrowed eyebrows showing something between confusion and fluttering anger. "Tell me," Itachi started, "do you know Haku?"

Sasuke blinked, "Haku with brown hair, right? The model Kisame photographed... right?"

"Mm-hum,"

"He was a classmate at primary school. A quite famous Instagram model, he seemed to be. Why?"

"He screwed my ex."

"Oh..."

"Do you think he's good-looking?"

"Well... he looks quite like you? I mean the long hair, his smile..."

"Have you seen the other model?"

"Do you mean Kisame's models?"

"Yes—the girl with brown hair, just like Haku. Do you know her?"

"Hmm... not really," except that one time when Sasuke helped Kisame in his studio, without Itachi, and ended up meeting an overtly anxious far relative—Uchiha Obito—saying to him that Kisame is taking photographs of his ex, Miru; a girl with pretty smile and long, long, long brown hair.

The jazz band is leaving for another. The newly arrived band turned out to be a cover band, they think a funk arrangement of RADIOHEAD' "Creep" would be a nice beginning for their one hour playing duration that Itachi almost bursting out laughing at the irony. But Itachi persisted at being as silent as the half body statue of a somber looking woman beside him.

Even more than Haku, Itachi practically loathes Miru.

Haku... technically, he's with Zabuza—Kisame's cousin, only he had held a long, long, long lived crush on Kisame and the latter managed to take advantage of that for many a summer, but Haku was more of a nuisance for Itachi and an escape for Kisame. He wasn't everywhere, though. He was, as Itachi tried to memorize it as it is; the guy Kisame screwed every now and then.

No real harm done. It was almost nothing.

With that in mind, Itachi is seconds away from finishing his third cigarette after Sasuke left to attend his hungry boyfriend at their apartment and his body is tragically slumped across the sofa; the funk "Creep" brought back some unwanted memories coming off a scene in his and Kisame's bedroom and after half a minutes reliving Kisame's half an hour conversation on the phone with deep furrowed eyebrows, the urge to smoke a fourth cigarette is already uncontrollable.

"I mean he looked so happy, Mum," he told Mikoto through the phone as he relished the infuriatingly funny and sweet snap-gram posts of his ex's girlfriend's surprise birthday party.

When he thinks about it, he was right. Itachi never starts a fight when it comes to Haku, but Miru's an ex—a cherished and deranged one at that.

She was the woman bearing Kisame's child for three months, after all. She was the first lover Kisame lived with, and she was Kisame's longest standing lover after himself and she was the lover Kisame left for Itachi. The only woman in the whole world able to remind him of how it feels like to be a wallflower left avoided, a vacancy behind cacophonous masks of honorable academic achievements, and a creep.


	3. La chanson des vieux amants

It's shameful enough to indirectly admit that he's been stalking Kisame through social media in front of said man. If anything, their breakup freed Itachi from mostly awkward but comforting silence between them throughout the last halcyon days when they were together.

But today's his birthday, the gorgeous sun rays glowing on pearly sea just under Kisame's apartment' windows, or sweat gliding its way through each uncovered arms of Kisame some twenty minutes ago flicked something inside Itachi; all these things seems to assure him that he should have totally different ideas about the whole unhealthy relationship thing he recently discussed with Naruto. "…guess I missed the opportunity to say fuck you, by the way." Itachi grumbled on Kisame's broad chest and the former felt it shivers under him as the older chuckled.

"Well no, it's wrong; _I_ just fucked you and not the other way around."

Itachi looked up at his ex, staring right through Kisame with that blank looks he knew the older is still addicted to.

"Heh… okay, Kid," and again, Kisame shivers. "So… what do we do now?" Kisame asked as he lovingly stroked Itachi's dishevelled tied hair.

"Getting your girlfriend killed, I guess?" Itachi chides with his lips sticking to the top of Kisame's chest—his whole figure, in fact, is currently occupying almost every part of Kisame's instead of taking the empty space on the other side of the king sized bed. Not to mention they're still starkly naked.

"Damn straight, Brat… why don't we kill my two year old son, too?"

Itachi froze and Kisame felt the lad's arm rigidly moving a tiny slight away from his waist.

Suddenly Itachi's head snapped; the glare landed automatically on Kisame's pale eyes. Kisame stared right back nonchalantly. They roam one another's faces for a second before Itachi decided to cut the tension through a huff of breathy, cynical, almost muted laugh. "It was true?" if Kisame didn't know better, the tone Itachi use for the question really sounds like a child asking about yesterday's happenings at school he undoubtedly missed but heard. But this guy he used to date is as deadly as 10 full-blown, fatally schizophrenic serial killers, so Kisame just shook his head and laid there, eyes on the bright ceiling.

Nothing could be heard in the room anymore except for an abrupt sharp intake of breath and Itachi's hardening fist jabbing Kisame's right rib.

Itachi rises and finally rolls to the empty space, he landed with a soft puff, "How's your girlfriend?"

"We broke up."

"And inviting me here sounds a good idea to you?"

"I couldn't resist, I hear no complain though."

Kisame take the chance to get a glimpse of his just-turned-22 ex and saw a bruise he hadn't noticed was there. He's sure enough he didn't bite him _there_.

No wonder that their friends believed having a boyfriend never stops Itachi from sleeping around, that it's just a strange contract for him, or a license, even though that doesn't make him an evil; only Kisame never learns when to remind himself who breaks it off just months ago to begin with.

"It's still early, it's June; you should visit them."

"Exactly, it's June, I'm fucking cold, and you looked amazing—you're finally here when I need you!"

Kisame has to emphasize the last words while taking a split second to grab his empty coffee cup, slammed it off the table as he grabbed Itachi's hair. Itachi felt his body knocked out of the bed with only one pull—Kisame's favourite ponytail be damned. Then Itachi fell with a loud thud. Not waiting for another second Kisame straddles Itachi down on the carpeted floor and closes both his hand around Itachi's neck. Unexpectedly, the only struggle that came out were almost nothing but a combination of uncontrollable slaps and punches just as foamy saliva starts brimming in Itachi's throat.

One would miss the barely breathing Kisame.

"Stop, being, so, SUICIDAL!"

His scream rang through the walls, his face so red veins popping out his temple as his muscles hardening, pumped from all the anger and perhaps that's why the choke faltered.

Itachi tried to push Kisame as the latter released his feverish hot neck, but Kisame moved just a little bit from on top of Itachi a while after both men catches rhythmically normal breathe. He let the younger scrambles to his feet. Itachi flailed until he practically gave up and falls again. As of now, he's crouching just beside the chair he has been sitting on for the past three hours and some minutes.

Kisame watches Itachi crying soundlessly with literal bland expression. He doesn't miss the dumbfounded stare Itachi been sparing him from, either. They stayed there unmoved by anything for an hour or so.

"Why don't you tell me you catch a cold?"

"Why don't you tell me you had son?"


End file.
